Sunday, December 13, 2015

Remembering John Trudell

John Trudell has passed to the other side on December 8, 2015.He was a Santee Sioux activist and a spoken
word artist.Trudell had a profound
influence on my thinking.Over the
years, I’ve stashed away a collection of information about him.The following is a sampler.

EXHIBIT
ONE

Trudell,
Appaloosa Pictures, 2005, directed by Heather Rae, starring John Trudell.This is a full-length documentary about John
Trudell, very well done.It’s available on YouTube.The commercial DVD includes additional
material.

Trudell:The spirit of life is almost nonexistent in
the perceptional reality of the society that we’re in.It’s almost nonexistent.They got religion, they got civilization,
they got military, they got politics, education.They got all the stuff.They don’t have the spirit to live.

EXHIBIT
TWO

“Crazy Horse, We Hear What You Say” is an essay that Trudell
wrote, which was used as the introduction to Of
Earth and Elders, by Serle L. Chapman, Mountain Press, Missoula,
Montana, 2002.It’s a clear and strong
five page summary of his perception of reality.Here are a few snips:

The coherency of our future depends upon us knowing who we
are — and truly understanding who we are — because our relationship to reality
and our relationship to power is based upon that understanding.Today we live in an industrial society and
this technological perception of reality, this shadow world, presents a serious
crisis: it is a reality where we don’t remember who we are, so therefore we don’t
know who we are, we speak a language we don’t understand and because of this,
we don’t know where we are.We are part
of an evolutionary reality but part of the purpose of this technological
civilization is to erase our memories and erase our identities.<snip>

If we truly recognized who we are, this society we exist in
and the way we live would be different.We
all live on a reservation now, an industrial reservation that stretches across
the world, and the alienation you can find in extreme forms on an Indian
reservation — the loneliness, alcoholism, drug abuse and violence — is being
replicated more and more throughout industrial society.<snip>

We all share a common collective experience: we are all the
descendants of tribes.Back in the time
of the original dreams we were all members of tribes and we were all the earth’s
children and we all knew that the earth was our mother.We were part of a spiritual reality.We were physical in a spiritual reality.Whoever we are today, we carry the genetic
experience of our lineage from the very beginning, encoded within our DNA.It’s like our genetic memory and somewhere
hidden in there we all come from a people that understood that we lived in a
spiritual reality and because of that realization everyone of our beginning
ancestral peoples understood that life was about responsibility; so we were
responsible for the past and the future as well as the present.So we knew who we were, we understood what we
were saying, we knew where we were and we knew our purpose, and this reality
lives in our genetic memories.The
purpose of technology is to erase our realities and make us powerless but
ancestral power is real.<snip>

The gift we’ve been given to protect ourselves as humans is
our intelligence.Our intelligence is
our medicine.We were not put here,
defenseless, to be eaten up by this mining process.This mining process takes place through our
intelligence, so if we understand the value and power of our intelligence we
can influence our evolution.

EXHIBIT
THREE

Rezamerica
in the Shade of Blue — A Conversation With John Trudell by Ben Corbett.This interview went extinct online.

Corbett:And that means taking responsibility?

Trudell:That’s exactly right.That spiritual reality is based upon
responsibility.Religious realities are
not spiritual.The religious reality
that exists in these technolgic industrial perceptions are not about
responsibility, they’re about authoritarianism and guilt and sin and blame,
domination and submission.They’re not
about responsibility.Look at the situation
and condition that the world is in and you can tell that they’re not about
responsibility.They accumulate wealth,
they create their own authoritarian systems, they use their authoritarian
systems and accumulated wealth to influence economic and political decisions
that get made.They use their resources,
they use their authority and accumulated wealth to influence military decisions
that get made.Every behavior they have
is really and truly not about responsibility.<snip>

Corbett:In other words, by being authoritarian,
what you do is you take the responsibility away from the people and then the
people feel there’s no need to take responsibility because somebody else is
doing it for them?

Trudell:Well they feel disconnected.They don’t really know what the meaning of
responsibility is.

Corbett:Do you think that’s one of the biggest
challenges facing the human race?

Trudell:Yeah,
actually I do.It may be the biggest one.Becoming reconnected to reality.<snip>

Corbett:What do you think it’s gonna mean for the future?

Trudell:That’s still to be
decided.Because when we look at the
non-native people here, remember they all came from tribes.And the civilizing process took that memory
away from them.So it happened 3000
years ago.Now we’ve been put into that
same process, but we’ve been in it for 500 years.So if we can keep our identity, our spiritual
identity, if we can keep our identity as human beings, then we’ll be okay.But if we can’t keep that identity, then we’ll
go the way of the descendants of the tribes of Europe.The future will be decided by what kind of
coherency we pass to the next generation.<snip>

EXHIBIT
FOUR

This interview
with WOJB’s Lori Townsend took place on February 28, 1998, before Trudell
performed in concert in Kyle, South Dakota, part of the 25th Anniversary of
Wounded Knee.

Townsend:I know that people have said, this is to
commemorate a time of healing, from that time when there was a lot of division.People were separated by the very nature of
the struggle.What have you seen in 25
years, as people come together, being able to heal from that time?

Trudell:(laughs) That’s a hard one to answer.I think we’ve learned more.And I think that learning is the healing
itself.In pragmatic, practical terms,
there are still personality differences and political differences that
different individuals have.So on one
level, it doesn’t look like it’s been healed.But on another level, we can all come back into one environment together
and be together.Whatever our opinions
and attitudes are, they don’t get in the way of us all being together.That’s like, there is some type of healing
that has taken place.But I’ve never
really approached it myself so much from the healing aspect, as the survivor’s
aspect.Here’s who survived, here’s who
still standing.

I look at it like that.I think healing, in a way, is an individual process.It has to happen in an individual before it
can happen in a community.

Again, if we learn from our experiences, then we have more
knowledge.To me, that’s always
essential to healing — knowledge and understanding.Very essential.But on the other hand, you can’t have real
healing if one does not look within themselves and start that healing process.<snip>

Townsend:Well, how should people pick their battles
now?As you said, if you get too
involved in politics, you become a politician.

Trudell:I said you can get involved in politics, but
you don’t have to be a politician.It’s
a mental thing.People start working on
political issues and then, at some point, they say, “I’m a political activist,”
and that becomes their identity; that’s where the problem comes.

The question you started to ask, whatever it is that we have
to do, how we’re going to approach it, I think we should think it out.Look at it from every direction.It’s almost as if we’re stepping out of our
minds, out of ourselves, and looking at the whole thing, with us in it, as
neutrally and as objectively as we can.That
way we’ll have some clarity to go after it as clearly as we can, rather than
emotionally, or limited by these identities that we impose on ourselves around
an issue.

It’s going to take clarity to see our way through these
things, to the future that is coming.

It is in our best interest to use our intelligence
intelligently.But we don’t do that
enough; 99.9 percent of us use our intelligence to manifest our fears, and our
insecurities on a daily basis. <snip>

Townsend:What can be done?It sounds too bleak.

Trudell:I don’t look at it as bleak.I think it’s best to recognize reality for
what it is.

What did I say about the cannibals?Let’s recognize that reality for what it is
and the reality of who we are.We have
intelligence.We have spirit.We have the ability to think our way through
this.I think it’s more optimistic to
see how dark it really is, and know what reality is, and then I won’t be
fooling myself about what I must do.

Wouldn’t it be better to understand that if I’m going to do
something, I’m not going to lie to myself about what I’m doing, whether it’s
glorious or ugly.I’m not going to fix
it up, romanticize it, or make it clean.If I’m doing it, I’m going to be as honest about it as I possibly can.If I can’t live with it, then I stop.If I lie to myself, then I’ll find ways to
live with it and continue to do it.That
obstructs our clarity.

Always tell ourselves the truth.Learn from mistakes.Don’t judge ourselves.We’re not in the judging business.Trust our ability.If we use our intelligence as coherently as
we can, we will create the solutions.

If we go back in our history, our ancestral understanding, we
always understood we had a purpose to be here.That purpose is to take care of life the best we can.What has changed is the harshness of the
environment.It was hard, not romantic
back then.

The hard now is the predatory civilization that surrounds us.Our ancestors trusted themselves, they
respected themselves.Pride today is the
mask people hide behind when they feel no respect for themselves.

Trust ourselves.Like
ourselves.I like myself.I always don’t like what I do.There is no collective solution without an
individual solution.

The darkest thing I see for the future is all these people
that are hoping and wishing and don’t want to see what’s coming.That’s the darkness.But they say they are bringing light and
being optimistic, but to me these people are the ones bringing the darkness
because they don’t want to deal with reality.These are the ones who will perish.These are the ones that will be fed upon and eaten up.

If one really thinks about it, we can romanticize being here
before the white man came.We were free,
we could do what we wanted, we had responsibilities, but I tell you what, you
see the storm we’re having right now.It
was hard surviving back then.So this is
just a different hard.These cannibals
are just a different hard. But they can
be dealt with.

I think if we really understand self-respect, we would look
at this and say, “this is the challenge and I’m up to meeting it.”

EXHIBIT
FIVE

Protecting
the Earth — An interview with John Trudell
by John Bowling, Earth First! Journal, May 1, 1998.This interview went extinct online.

Bowling:The new generation of EF! activists are
arguing over whether or not nonviolence is the most expedient strategy for the
movement.People are discussing whether
or not it would be appropriate right now to employ more self-defensive, possibly
even violent means of defending the Earth.What effects do you think that would have on the movement?

Trudell:I think we need to have an understanding of
what violence is because a great many people say they are against violence, yet
they live off of the fruits of violence...We live within systems that are violent.We live in excess.We are part of
an excessive consuming society.That’s
the result of violence against the Earth…The reality is that even though we say we are against violence, we still
consume the products of violence against the Earth.Anytime that we have more than we need,
anytime that we live a life that we are consuming all we want, especially in
the material sense, then we are perpetuating violence.

Bowling:You’re familiar with Gandhi’s work and the
civil rights movement.What then is your
opinion of Gandhian-style non-cooperation?

Trudell:Gandhi was operating in a different situation
than here.So, I think that there are
elements of what he was doing that work here.But, what Gandhi did in India is not going to work here because this isn’t
India.We aren’t Gandhi.But, I think lessons can be learned.I think it is really about non-cooperation in
the long run.

Say it became Earth First!’s objective, on behalf of the Earth,
as a means of raising environmental awareness, to organize on one agreed upon
day that we didn’t spend any money.We
went to work.We did whatever else it is
we do...but we don’t spend any money.Look on a national level and try to get 25
percent of the population to do it.Everything
we do violently or nonviolently is feeding into the economic system.We’re attacking the issues but we’re not
dealing with the reality of what’s behind the issues and that is the economic
system.

Let’s say 25 percent of the population is involved...That would add up to incredible number that
would affect the daily economic reality...You look at the economic system.It
is in such a fine line balance anyway.If
people would just one day say, “Hold on, I’m not going to consume,” then they
would really understand what kind of power they have in this society, which
goes way beyond the power of the vote.I
think it could be accomplished...There
doesn’t have to be any party line, no one idea that is prevalent other than
protecting the Earth, standing fast with the Earth.It’s a fast for her.If somebody’s issue is the river or if
somebody’s issue is the trees or if somebody’s issue is toxic waste, they can
still talk those issues...To me it goes
into the area of non-cooperation.It’s
not about violence or nonviolence or obedience or civil disobedience.We just won’t cooperate.

EXHIBIT
SIX

My first blog about Trudell was posted in 2013: HERE.There are many videos of Trudell on
YouTube.His recordings are for sale at his website.

6 comments:

"The darkest thing I see for the future is all these people that are hoping and wishing and don’t want to see what’s coming. That’s the darkness. But they say they are bringing light and being optimistic, but to me these people are the ones bringing the darkness because they don’t want to deal with reality. These are the ones who will perish."

I have long said that the New Age Movement is an attempt to go straight up into the light without first journeying into one's own darkness and the darkness of our common culture.

The result of that futile attempt at "enlightenment" is to be blinded by a light that one does not have the eyes to see, as those eyes have not been tempered by the granular, gritty, dirty reality that encompasses us.

Both the Hero's Journey and the Vision Quest are a process of going downward to meet our demons, find allies, discover our strengths and then rise into the light to share our gifts with our people.

Agree with Riversong's post above. Being 'optimistic' for it's own sake can be dangerous. I wrote an essay in college about a decade ago related to this topic, and am happy to see Richard's post, Riversong's comment, and the words of Trudell say what I was trying to say clearly and eloquently.

Riversong, I agree. I haven’t been around New Age folks much lately. I’ve known some who have a strong spiritual connection to life, while also understanding that industrial civilization is sliding into some very dark shadows. They can feel the presence of power and beauty, but lack a strong connection to the places and cultures where their roots belong.

Others seem to live in a dream world and excel at magical thinking. Others seem like profit oriented hustlers. I recall a time 30 years ago, when I read 5 or 6 Lynn Andrews books in about two weeks — her stuff triggered some ancestral chords, and my bullshit filters were still in nappies.

Hey Matt! Still working on the book. It will probably arrive in the next couple months. I've also compiled 105 pages of notes for a fourth book, our family history, from our tree nest days to the valley of the shadow of catastrophic climate change.

Trudell said "All of the animals on earth are playing their proper role, except the human people." How did that happen? That's the riddle I'm focused on.

Hi Jan! Our culture is so thoroughly trained to think inside the box, but Trudell lived outside the walls. He had a lot of important things to say, and he said them well. He helped me a lot. A great man!